Gestures by OSTUPS and translated by Jayde Will

This is poetry from Latvia.

Gestures by OSTUPS translated by Jayde Will is published by Ugly Duckling Presse. This is a Book originally written in Latvian. This was published in 2018.0 and has the ISBN of 9.781937027902E12.

Gestures, by OSTUPS and translated from Latvian by Jayde Will, has a title that suggests poetry as movement before explanation. A gesture can be small, intimate, theatrical, incomplete, or misunderstood. It is language made by the body when speech is either unnecessary or insufficient. In this Latvian collection, I would expect poems attentive to fragments of relation: hands, glances, departures, signals, failed signals. Ugly Duckling Presse often publishes work with a strong sense of formal and material texture, which makes this title especially appealing. Will’s translation gives English readers a way into a contemporary Latvian poetic field that is too rarely visible. I would read Gestures for what it allows to remain partial, because sometimes the unfinished motion says more than the completed statement.

If you’d like to see international poetry continue and gain traction, consider requesting this work from your local library, or purchasing it from places like Open Books (a poetry only bookstore), Asterism Books (an independent press distributor), or bookshop.org to connect you with your local bookstores.

Check out more of the always in-progress translated poetry index here.